What happened to the Oscar bump? Used to be, the "little" films that got important nominations would have a month or so of free publicity before Oscar Night and make some nice coin. This year, though, three of the five top nominees made hardly a dent. The Reader, Frost/Nixon and Milk together have earned less than $25 million since the nominations were announced, and about $63 million since they opened. (Last year, the bottom three grossers among Best Picture nominees — Atonement, Michael Claytonb and There Will Be Blood — took in more than twice that amount. And that was supposed to be an artsy year.) For even serious movie fans, The Reader and the two bio-pics are just three more titles to add to their Netflix queue.
The Reader is just now hitting the $20 million mark, which means fewer people have seen the movie than voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. That is a minority crowd. Harvey Weinstein, whose company distributes The Reader, has long been Sammy Savvy in turning Oscar-nominated art films into popular ones — and even he can't get folks to pay for this movie, despite glowing reviews and Kate Winslet's face on many a magazine cover. You might have thought the picture could be sold with two words: sexy Nazi. In fact, the predations of the Third Reich may be of interest only to geezers. And people no longer go to a movie house to see virtual sex. They get enough of that at home. Odds of winning: 40 to 1
Director: Steven Daldry
He's directed three feature films — Billy Elliot, The Hours and this — and been Oscar-nominated for each. The view here is that The Reader is by far his finest movie work, getting a startlingly raw and mature performance from young David Kross, and pushing Winslet to find the moral void at the center of a woman who never loses her fascination. But win the Oscar this year? Nein. Der Nichtsnutz. Die Abzahlung. Odds of winning: 60 to 1